Welcome to my stop along the blog tour for The Cat King of Havana by Tom Crosshill! This book sounds like SO much fun! Rick is a major lover of cat videos. Seriously. He even gets dumped for it! So what better way to celebrate the release of this awesome 2016 debut than by sharing a few of my favorite cat videos with you? I’ve spent thousands of hours of my life watching cat videos online, so the hardest thing about this was narrowing the list down to these.

After you’re done playing and replaying these adorable videos, read more about the book and enter to win a copy of your own!

Which of these videos do you love the most? Link me to any others you think I need to see!

Rick Gutierrez is . . . the Cat King of Havana! A cat-video tycoon turned salsa-dancer extraordinaire, he’ll take Cuba by storm, romance the girl of his dreams, and ignite a lolcat revolution!

At least that’s the plan.

It all starts when his girlfriend dumps Rick on his sixteenth birthday for uploading cat videos from his bedroom when he should be out experiencing the real world. Known as “That Cat Guy” at school, Rick isn’t cool and he knows it. He realizes it’s time for a change.

Rick decides joining a salsa class is the answer . . . because of a girl, of course. Ana Cabrera is smart, friendly, and smooth on the dance floor. Rick might be half-Cuban, but he dances like a drunk hippo. Desperate to impress Ana, he invites her to spend the summer in Havana. The official reason: learning to dance. The hidden agenda: romance under the palm trees.

Except Cuba isn’t all sun, salsa, and music. There’s a darker side to the island. As Rick and Ana meet his family and investigate the reason why his mother left Cuba decades ago, they learn that politics isn’t just something that happens to other people. And when they find romance, it’s got sharp edges.

About Tom Crosshill

Tom Crosshill’s fiction has been nominated for the Nebula Award (thrice) as well as the Latvian Annual Literature Award. His stories have appeared in venues such as Clarkesworld, Beneath Ceaseless Skies and Lightspeed. In 2009, he won the Writers of the Future contest. After some years spent in Oregon and New York, he currently lives in his native Latvia. In the past, he has operated a nuclear reactor, translated books and worked in a zinc mine, among other things.

Tom’s young adult novel “The Cat King of Havana” is forthcoming from Katherine Tegen Books (HarperCollins) in 2016.

Hi, I’m Jana!

I’m a 30-something graphic designer, singer, book lover, avid world traveler, cat whisperer, whale watcher, and art enthusiast. I live in the snowy Rocky Mountains, have an unhealthy obsession with soft blankets, and have been known to toss my book aside in favor of binging shows on Netflix.